The analysis of e-commerce platform is a complicated issue. There is a number of threads to be considered i.e. bounce rates, the average value of the order, the flow of transactions, conversion rate, the impact of SEO on positioning, etc. Such data is useful in terms of the website performance and shows what happens when people open it. However, in terms of strategy, this is just an element of the puzzle.
It is more important to look for the answers to the following questions:
/ Why do the visitors open my website? What made them come here?
/ Why don’t they click CTA at the product website?
/ What are they looking for? How can we help them find it?
/ Why do so many people exit the baskets?
Only to some extent can traditional analysis help to answer these questions.
User – oriented approach comes to help.
The analysis is a way of learning how the clients came across, went through and finally exited our platform (these steps are known as “customer journey”). For instance, when you need to develop hypotheses concerning improvement or determine how the company should fix specific points whose conversion is far away from the one that had been assumed, then conclusions based on the reports solely are not sufficient.
A typical scenario. There is some data which shows that the user exited the basket or someone exited your website at the product page without adding anything to the basket. Even though the data you have might be useful while measuring the effectiveness of the platform in terms of numbers, it will not help understand the problems concerning UX and CX.
Let’s consider a hypothetical example.
Chris is a performance manager in an online shop. He started analysing the platform of his company to find out how the clients came upon, went through and finally exited the website. He begins with Google Analytics to check such data as unique visits, average time spent on the website and the searching method. He is able to develop a few concepts of the reasons why there are some problems with UX, but the data was not sufficient to understand why the users ignored key elements on some of the pages. At this point, it is worth making use of the hit maps and surveys.
Chris has to understand the needs and expectations of the visitors:
/ Why they enter the website
/ Why they perform (or not) particular activities
/ How he can help them find what they are looking for
This is why he uses:
Hit maps: to see the interactions on the website
The recordings of the sessions: the preview of the customer journey
Surveys: to learn customer’s needs and follow Customer Experience rates (CX)
Opinion widgets: to get an instant feedback
If you would like to learn more about how we analyse the performance of online shops, do not hesitate to contact us:
+48 530 318 786
info@digitalneuma.com